Published on May 16, 2014A decade of legalized gay marriage that kicked off in Massachusetts on May 17, 2004, has seen mixed outcomes in the intervening years. Gains in legal status achieved in some states are coupled with continued opposition in others.

The daytime drama "officially" launched in 1951, when “Search For Tomorrow” premiered on CBS TV. Though there were a few short lived serials which preceded “Search” it was this live drama, produced by Proctor and Gamble Productions, which turned out to be the first of these shows to capture a sizable audience. By the time “Search For Tomorrow” ended its 35 year run in 1986, not a single LGBT character had appeared in the fictional town of Henderson.

MOREHEAD, Ky. -- The latest on the defiant Kentucky clerk who has refused to issue marriage licenses to gay couples, disobeying a federal judge and serving five days in jail for contempt (all times local):

October is LGBT History Month. The purpose of the commemorative month is to recognize the impact that LGBT individuals have had on history locally, nationally, and internationally. National Coming Out Day (October 11), as well as the first “March on Washington” in 1979, are commemorated in the LGBT community during LGBT History Month.

Has any television show pushed the envelope more than Norman Lear's "All in the Family?" Conceived in the immediate aftermath of the 1960s counter-cultural revolution, "All in the Family" was a sitcom about a blue-collar family in Queens, New York. Archie Bunker (Carroll O'Connor) was a less-than-educated gent who genuinely loved his family. He also loved God and Country, and didn't take kindly to those "commie pinkos" who wanted to "take over". Archie often sparred with his liberal son-in-law Mike (Rob Reiner), as wife Edith (Jean Stapleton) and daughter Gloria (Sally Struthers) struggled to keep the peace.

CANBERRA, Australia — Prime Minister Tony Abbott said Wednesday that Australians would get a chance to vote on legalizing gay marriage if they re-elect his government next year — a promise his opponents argue is a stalling tactic to sideline the divisive issue ahead of the general elections.

For my friend Dick Leitsch, the last president of the Mattachine Society of New York, who last May turned 80, history was unavoidable. I met Dick in two different periods of my life. At 20, I attended my first and only meeting of the New York Mattachine Society, at the old Wendell Wilkie House near Bryant Park in New York City. He moderated, handsome, stylish, with a soft-spoken Kentuckian polished air. I was turned totally off: Mattachine was strictly out of my world as, new to New York, I struggled to make sense of myself. Two years later, a few months after Stonewall, I joined the Gay Liberation Front. GLF offered me a valid political understanding of why queers were being destroyed in American society, and what we had to do, often rowdy as we were, to change it. Both Dick and Mattachine were loathed by many of my young GLF brothers and sisters, some of whom had been in it and, like unruly kids, resented their dowdier parents.

Walt Whitman is one of America’s most celebrated poets, essayists and journalists, even though during his lifetime (1819-1897) his work was considered controversial. Whitman broke with many traditions and is now seen as the father of free verse. Fundamentalists objected to the homoerotic passages in his poetry collection “Leaves of Grass,” which was described as obscene and overtly sexual. Yet, his work is now part of the American literary canon and read and studied in schools and universities.

NEW YORK -- Elton John says changes in the U.S. over the past year have positively affected the LGBT community, including the Supreme Court's decision on marriage equality. But he says "there's more history to be made" in the fight against HIV/AIDS.